Old Story, New Spin

I realised the other day that the Trilogy I am currently working on has been with me a long time.

I have been reorganising my room to be a more creative space, and one of the things I did was de-clutter, by sorting through and recycling old notebooks I have had taking up valuable space on my book shelves. In one of these notebooks, actually it was an old sketchbook, I found the original first page of Book 1. There was my name, the Title of the book, and the date. That`s it, the rest of the page was blank.

I have often found blank pages overwhelming, but in this instance I guess I found the title overwhelming and could not proceed on that page. Or perhaps, however unlikely, I thought the title was so perfect that the page already had enough significant information on it. Either way, the part I found most amazing was that the page was dated 2002.

2002. That was 10 years ago! I have had this world, these characters and their stories developing for 10 years. If I hadn't seen the date on the page in my own writing then I wouldn't have believed that my story is 10 years old.

 In some of the other books I found sketches and drawing I had done while trying to create my characters. I remembered every drawing, and was surprised to see so many characters that I had created, but never written into the story.

10 years have gone by since I roughed out the first draft of Book 1. It has stayed mostly untouched, written at a grade 9 reading level on one of my many shelves waiting for me to get back to it.
The story and it's characters have never left me, and I have developed it bit by bit over the years, but until last year I wasn't taking my writing as seriously as I should have been.

Years ago I reread the first draft of Book 1 and although the plot and characters are dynamic and captivating, the story was abysmally disappointing. Apparently grade 9 me was not at all interested in sharing details with her readers.
I have been intending to rewrite the draft of Book 1 completely, but I always seem to get bored by the task of editing and instead move onto Book 2 which I have been writing consistently for the past 13 months.

Writing is rarely a challenge for me, but getting the motivation to know what to focus on, and complete is nearly impossible; proven by the multitude of part stories scattered through assorted journals in my room.

I realised I had to decide what I wanted out of my writing- I want to share it, and in order to share it I need a literary agent to work with, and in order to start looking for agents, I need a partial, if not full, manuscript to present them with. As the only manuscript I have at the moment is of Book 2, I figured I should let Book 2 sit for a bit while I focus on the original; the start of my Trilogy.

I have been diligently picking away at Book 1 and performing a near complete rebuild of the novel. Without me realising it, the world I had developed in my head, in my drafts and in Book 2 is nearly unrecognisable to the world I had originally created in Book 1. Until I picked up the terrifying Red Pen for the editing process I didn't realise how much my perception of the story as a whole had changed from my initial creation.

I thought I would be disappointed, but instead I am pleased to realise that I am proud of the changes. My high schooler's doodles and scribbles have turned into near fully rendered characters and situations.

The story has matured, and like fine wine, although without the oaky finish, I am deeply satisfied with it.

-Brandolyn

G-18,020 <---Book 1
TToA- 89,415 <---Book 2
TDotRQ-37,276<---Book 1 of another series I am writing